Category: Uncategorized
-
The Road Not Taken
One summer about five years ago, the council changed the layout of paths in my local park. Perhaps cowed by the fact that they had been so properly laid out and surfaced, we kept to the new paths and changed our normal routes through to town. All of us that is but the daffodils who…
-
Creative Writing for Garden Lovers
Visiting gardens for creative inspiration has been one of my greatest pleasures over the last few years, as witnessed by this website! And so I’m really pleased to see this fantastic initiative launched by the You Grow Girl community. The first prompt by Gayla Trail is to write about your first plant – Michelle Chapman has written…
-
West Dean, Chichester
The gardens at West Dean have a traditionally English feel to them. But as wide and expansive as they are, particularly when you walk up through the St Roches arboretum to see Edward James’s grave and look back at the house… … it’s impossible not to sense the magic running through this estate. It’s as…
-
A walk in the woods – textiles, photograph and poetry
I’m very happy to be part of this exhibition in Crowborough – it’s on until 6th February, but if you around on Saturday 26th January and fancy joining Anne Kelly, John Morrison and me for a drink and a chat, we will be there from 10-1pm. More details of the Exhibition here. But in the…
-
Longing in the Garden
One of the highlights of the Nude Men exhibition we saw at the Leopold Museum was a series of self-portraits by an artist I’d never heard of before, Richard Gerstl. And then further up the gallery, I came across this painting, also by Gerstl, and simply titled, Mathilde in the Garden. This time it wasn’t…
-
Not such new news – GMGA New Talent Finalist 2012
Forget tomorrow’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year, I’ve just realised I haven’t yet posted anything on here about this website’s exciting placing as a finalist in the Garden Media Guild Awards New Talent category. New talent!!! Of course, it’s not a normal talent contest – I didn’t have to sing or tap dance (luckily)…
-
Quebec House, Westerham
I was attracted to Quebec House, the childhood home of General James Wolfe, not by wanting to find more about the ‘conqueror of Quebec’ but because the National Trust are currently re-doing the small vegetable garden (actually just a strip) with the flowers and vegetables General Wolfe’s mother would have grown in the 1730s. Many…
-
Prison Landscapes
I know about real gardens in prisons, but it was only when I was browsing in a second-hand art book shop in London that I found out about the scenes of gardens and natural spaces that are painted in prisons throughout America for prisoners – often with their families – to be photographed against. The…
-
Dungeness – but is it a garden?
I didn’t have any hesitation in putting Dungeness on my list of Kent gardens to visit, although when I walked around I began wondering whether this was because of my love of Derek Jarman’s garden. Because apart from certain notable exceptions, I think that the good folk of Dungeness have more on their minds than…
-
St John’s Jerusalem, Sutton-at-Hone
No wonder Sir Stephen Tallents and his wife loved St John’s Jerusalem so much they gave it to the National Trust, it is a real sanctuary of peace and loveliness. Walking round, it is hard not to feel its history as home to the Knights Hospitallers of the Order of St John of Jerusalem since…
-
The Franciscan Gardens, Canterbury
It’s always surprising to me to find these ‘hidden’ gardens right in the middle of the city, and the gardens behind Franciscan Friary off the High Street, and behind these gates is just one such gem… To be honest, when I visited – last February – there wasn’t much to see (certainly compared with when…